


The Keeper

by LokiDoki221



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Food Kink, M/M, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Incest, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 17:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12370314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokiDoki221/pseuds/LokiDoki221
Summary: “A sibling may be the keeper of one’s identity, the only person with the keys to one’s unfettered, more fundamental self.”The summer before university, 18-year-old Sherlock is sent to stay with Mycroft in London. The Holmes brothers are more alike than they believe, and it's only a matter of time before they unlock each other's fundamental selves.-o-o-o-Tags will be updated as the story progresses, but this is going to be Holmescest and also kinky, mainly regarding food (I think... :P)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... I am writing things again. Even if those things are niche-erotica-that-isn't-even-erotic-yet. :P
> 
> Opening chapter to lay some groundwork, AKA 'Look who's not writing PWP for once!'
> 
> Comments and critiques gratefully received, I hope you all enjoy. :)

The first time Sherlock gets an erection Mycroft knows before he does, because that’s just bloody typical.

Sherlock is a confident twelve, Mycroft a sophisticated nineteen, joining his parents and brother on their annual summer trip to the Cornish coast. It was the only family event he had attended for longer than twenty-four hours since starting university: this holiday was a tradition that outweighed his feelings regarding sentimentality, and it was with hidden childish glee he had returned to the folds of the family summer house. And, of course, it thrilled his parents to have him back. Admittedly he had driven down alone a day after they had arrived, but he felt that was forgivable. Relaxed and familial as he may have been feeling, a six-hour car journey stuffed into the backseat next to Sherlock was still not something in any way appealing. Sherlock was even more of a pain in the arse than normal when put in a confined space, and the car was the worst.

The family cottage was small and secluded, and Sherlock and Mycroft had shared the smaller of the two bedrooms ever since they were young. Mycroft remembered the first year his parents had moved Sherlock from the cot in their room to the twin bed in the room Mycroft had spent nine years thinking of as his. Much as he loved Sherlock, he had not appreciated the invasion of territory that had until then been exclusively his own.

Now though, both of them older, things were easier. Mycroft woke with the early morning sun breaking through the thin curtains, stretched, yawned, and rolled over in the little bed. Sherlock was still sleeping, sheets tangled in one of his feet, mouth slightly open and snoring quietly. The tent in his boxer shorts is obvious, and Mycroft raises his eyebrows, unsure why he’s so surprised. Sherlock’s brain may be different to other twelve-year-old boys, but his physiology isn’t. Sherlock grunts and rolls over onto his side, stroking a sleepy hand across his crotch. His other hand moves to rub his eyes, and Mycroft quickly makes the decision to feign sleep himself. Sherlock yawns, still half-asleep, and suddenly becomes aware of the situation between his legs. He casts his eyes furtively towards Mycroft, and, assured his brother is sleeping, touches himself with a little more certainty through the fabric of his underwear. The sensation makes him shiver. He likes it. Unsure quite what else to do he reaches a hand inside his waistband and strokes his strange new erection a few more times until an awareness of Mycroft’s presence makes him stop suddenly. He slips out of bed as quietly as possible and into the bathroom where he showers and explores a little further. It’s not long before everything’s back to normal, and he washes his hair and body before returning to the bedroom. Mycroft is reading, and nods a silent greeting. Sherlock scowls back, unaware how much he’s blushing.

He experiments more and more in the privacy of his bedroom and the bathroom over the following months, but is thoroughly irritated with the whole thing by the time he's fourteen. It's still pleasurable in terms of the physical sensation, he can’t deny that, but it's so distracting, and, hard though he tries, he can’t force the need into nothingness. Like sleeping or eating, it’s something mindless and physical that he’s compelled to satiate. There's nothing to occupy his brain, nothing interesting, but at least sleeping or eating serve _some_ useful purpose. Masturbation - _wanking, jerking off, jacking it_ \- had nothing going for it whatsoever.

Neither of them raise what happened on the holiday, although when Sherlock is fifteen they do share a blunt exchange of words surrounding sex. Mycroft is a year into his role as a civil servant, in an exact role that he won’t (or as he claims, _can’t_ ) tell them about, which Sherlock finds incredibly irritating and pompous of him. The majority of his annoyance may or may not be rooted in the fact he can’t for the life of him come close to deducing what his brother could possibly be doing. Mycroft lives in London, and Sherlock is still at home, with tutors now after three expulsions in under three years. They miss each other, not that either will admit it.

‘Do you fuck in London?’ Sherlock says suddenly.

‘Excuse me?’ Mycroft says incredulously. The Ice Man’s mask isn’t quite complete yet, and there are still occasional emotional slip ups.

Sherlock looks at him like he’s stupid, and repeats his question in the kind of tone he might have used on a particularly stupid puppy. Sherlock has an IQ high enough to bring down a small empire or raise a large army, but he also has the attitude of a particularly bored and rather immature teenager (which, in all honesty, he is). It’s beyond irritating. Mycroft resists the urge to punch his brother, and settles for taking a deep breath.

‘I… have relations,’ he says, knowing there’s no point in lying to Sherlock but also not wanting to be so crude as to reduce his sex life to the word ‘fuck,’ although really that is all he’s doing half the time. Men and women both, sometimes for the conversation and company, sometimes just for the sake of aesthetics, or pleasure. The weight he gained in university is more or less gone now too, and that helps.

‘With _other people_?’ Sherlock almost spits the words,

‘They can be rather useful for things like that actually,’ Mycroft informs him, just a little bitingly.

They sit without speaking for several moments before Mycroft breaks the silence with a question he already knows the answer to.

‘What about you? Do you fuck?’

Sherlock scoffs. ‘I think not. What’s the point of it? Sex serves no purpose other than reproduction, and I will never be interested in that, or _it_.’

‘You’ll feel differently when you’re older,’ Mycroft says condescendingly.

‘I will not!’ Sherlock protests.

He won’t admit it, doesn’t even understand how it could be, but Sherlock is jealous of Mycroft. Not for the sex exactly, no, the thought of anyone touching his body in that way leaves him feeling something between indifference and revulsion, but the fact Mycroft has something he doesn’t, that he has knowledge Sherlock can’t obtain… That gets under his skin. It’s a thousand times worse to think that _they_ , the great writhing masses of _normal_ people, understand it too.

It’s not until he’s seventeen that Sherlock really begins to understand what Mycroft might have meant, to really feel like perhaps sex was about more than procreation. He likes men, he knows that, so procreation is more or less out of the picture anyway.

Their parents are going away travelling for three months to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary, and are, understandably, unwilling to leave Sherlock home alone for so long. He begins university almost as soon as they return anyway, and it’s generally decided a summer without them will be good for him. They’re not leaving him all alone though, no, of course they couldn’t do that.

Mycroft has been volunteered - volun- _told_ , more like - to have Sherlock stay with him for the duration. Under duress, he has agreed. It became clear to him within five minutes of talking to Mummy that he didn’t actually have a choice.

Sherlock has lost a little of his attitude, but Mycroft is beginning to more than suspect that Sherlock is not going to grow out of his teenage ways so much as he’s going to grow in to them. He has seen less of Sherlock recently, although Mummy has been sure to keep him updated as to how he is in her phone calls. Sherlock’s growth spurt finally came in, and he’s now only a couple of inches below Mycroft. He listens to the classical composers their father does and to one Neil Diamond album. He reads outside, and spends a lot of time _wandering_ , as Mummy calls it, and with his ever-expanding chemical experiments. He loves chemistry, and it is that which he will be studying come the end of summer, having finally obliged expectations by completing the A-levels he could have passed three years ago. He rarely eats with their parents, and they’ve more or less given up confiscating his cigarettes. These are the main things Mycroft knows about eighteen-year-old Sherlock.

July rolls around all too soon, and Mycroft finds himself stood on his doorstep, kissing his mother’s cheek and shaking his father’s hand before they disappear in their taxi to the airport and leave him stood with Sherlock and a large, black suitcase.

‘Mycroft,’ Sherlock acknowledges. He observes his brother, squinting a little against the sun, hair a tangled mess of cascading curls, arms folded and face scowling. He’s chewing gum.

‘Lovely to see you, brother mine,’ Mycroft says, just a little dryly.

Sherlock blows a bubble from the pink gum, immature and indifferent. It pops, and Sherlock goes back to chewing. Mycroft swallows back a heavy sigh, and wonders for a horrible moment if he was this bad at eighteen. _No_ , he decides quickly. He _definitely_ wasn't anything like this.

‘You’d best come in,’ he says eventually.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Mycroft has a moody teenager living with him. And not just any moody teenager, but an incredibly intelligent (and incredibly immature) one at that. Thoughts and prayers. :P

Sherlock observes what is to be his room for the next few months. He throws himself lazily back on the large double bed as he hears Mycroft’s tread on the stairs. Sherlock’s is the attic room.

‘Boots _off_ the bed, thank you,’ Mycroft says.

Sherlock obliges, swinging his boot-clad feet off over the edge of the bed.

‘Mummy said you’d need some new clothes,’ Mycroft comments, observing Sherlock’s trousers are so faded they’re almost worn through completely at the knees.

Sherlock sits up. ‘I keep growing.’

‘I can see.’

‘Might outgrow you yet.’

Mycroft wishes the thought didn’t scare him quite so much as it does, and is about to make a comment about how little he really cares when he sees Sherlock flipping open the lid of a cardboard pack of Marlboro’s.

‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘Not in the house.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Sherlock says, the cigarette already between his lips. ‘Why not?’

‘It’s against the terms of my lease, and you know how much it upsets Mum and Dad.’

‘You smoke.’

‘I do not!’

‘Yes you bloody well do,’ Sherlock counters certainly.

‘Not in the house,’ Mycroft retorts lamely. Sherlock is searching his pockets for a light. ‘I said _no_ , Sherlock.’

His brother looks at him and heaves the kind of disgruntled sigh only ever achieved by teenage boys. ‘What if I stay by the window?’

‘ _No_ ,’ Mycroft repeats, but he already knows this is a battle he’s bound to lose before the summer is out.

‘I’m hungry,’ Sherlock says, accidentally-on-purpose knocking Mycroft’s shoulder as he skulks out of the room.

Mummy had warned him Sherlock was moody at the moment, but, dear God, he hadn’t thought it would be _this_ bad. Sherlock’s been in the house nineteen minutes. Mycroft is already struggling to think of reasons not to throttle him. He bites the inside of his cheek in an effort to hold back his irritation, and follows Sherlock downstairs.

‘You can help yourself to what you like,’ Mycroft says agreeably, finding Sherlock looking at the contents of the fridge scathingly. He grunts a response, and swings the door shut hard enough that Mycroft hears the contents rattling within.

Sherlock sniffs. ‘You got spare keys?’

‘Do I _have_ spare keys?’ Mycroft says very deliberately.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. ‘ _Have_ spare keys,’ he echoes, just a little mockingly, but even his teenage apathy can’t hide his surprise as Mycroft pulls a set of keys from his pocket with an obvious letter S charm hanging from the ring in stylishly tarnished metal.

‘These are for you,’ Mycroft says. ‘Your own, not spare, so take care of them.’ The chain has three keys, and Mycroft indicates each in turn. ‘Front door, back door, your bedroom.’ Sherlock looks at him wide-eyed over that one. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Sherlock. You’re an adult. It’s just a key.’

It’s more than a key though, and they both know it. This is more trust than anyone has ever placed in Sherlock before, more privacy and independence than he’s ever really known, even in the large family home.

Sherlock plucks the keys from his brother’s hand and heads towards the door, more than a hint of confident swagger in his step. He’s so incredibly adolescent still, Mycroft thinks. Nobody could possibly begin to believe in the brain he harbours beneath those curls while he carried on like this.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Food,’ Sherlock says simply, already out the door.

 _Food._ Still Mycroft’s greatest nemesis, even so long after losing the majority of the extra weight he had carried. He places a slightly self-conscious hand on his belly, feeling the soft little layer of pudge. He’s nowhere near his heaviest weight, but he’s also definitely not where he was a couple of years ago. He sighs, pushing back envious thoughts of Sherlock’s lithe frame. He looks in the fridge, takes out lettuce, tomatoes, spinach, and chicken, and gets to work making a salad.

He’s sat up at the breakfast bar eating when Sherlock returns, slamming the door behind him. Mycroft closes his eyes, counts to five internally. This seems to be just another of Sherlock’s bad habits.

Sherlock ambles into the kitchen, a white plastic bag in hand. He makes a face at Mycroft’s half-eaten salad.

‘That looks boring.’

‘Nutritious,’ Mycroft says, and Sherlock’s skin prickles just a little at the condescension.

Sherlock mutters something darkly, taking chopsticks and a cardboard carton of noodles from the bag. He sits up on the counter, and begins demolishing the noodles. Mycroft watches, faintly disgusted but mainly fascinated. He remembers eating like that… not that he could maintain anything like Sherlock’s figure while doing so. He turns back to his salad.

_Boring._

Sherlock wasn’t wrong. Mycroft’s mouth waters as he recalls the salty, succulent flavours of lo mein noodles, the heavy fluffiness of Chinese sticky rice and the sweet and sour sauce with Hong Kong style chicken, aromatic crispy duck skin and tender shredded meat with rice flour pancakes and rich hoisin plum sauce… The thoughts alone are enough to send a tingling sensation all the way down to his groin and he pushes them firmly away, ashamed. Food is so much more than fuel to Mycroft, it’s comfort and reassurance and routine and desire, and he can’t pretend it doesn’t turn him on at least a little.

He doesn’t realise he’s back to staring at Sherlock, so lost in thought as he is.

‘What?’ Sherlock says scornfully.

‘Nothing. Sorry,’ Mycroft says quickly, looking back down at the tabletop and feeling his ears turning pink. He cringes internally at his mistake and pathetic cover up. Food is more than fuel. Food is fucking erotic. And Sherlock… well, he’s a fly in the amber now, threatening Mycroft’s restraint within a day of turning up.

_For fuck’s sake._

He curses his own weakness and physical desires… he won’t call them needs. He looks up at the crunching sound of Sherlock wolfing down prawn crackers.

‘Want one?’ he says, mouth full.

He does. God knows he does.

‘No,’ he says firmly, ‘thank you.’

‘Suit yourself.’ Sherlock finishes up the crackers and more or less inhales several spring rolls.

‘Do you actually chew your food at all?’ Mycroft enquires innocently.

Sherlock scowls at him, swallows the last spring roll and scrunches up the paper bag. The only thing remaining in the plastic bag he’d brought back is a bottle of sparkling water. Sherlock takes several long gulps, Adam’s apple bobbing with each swallow, and sighs with relief. The sound alone does something to Mycroft he can’t quite explain, raises an unexpected and unwanted arousal he can’t understand. Sherlock’s his _brother_ , for God’s sake. He needs some good sex, that’s all it is. With things being so busy over in his office he hasn’t had time to even think of his own needs. He mentally scrolls through the list of people he could call…

Sherlock makes a fist of his right hand and thumps his chest, releasing a reverberant belch.

‘Charming,’ Mycroft deadpans.

‘Any time.’ Sherlock flashes a false performer’s smile at Mycroft and winks theatrically.

Mycroft sighs, although he is somewhat amused, and clears away his half-eaten salad. Sherlock slips down from the counter and leans forward to force another burp in Mycroft’s ear.

‘Sherlock!’ he admonishes, ducking away. ‘That’s disgusting!’ Sherlock chuckles darkly. The protest, while convincing, is not entirely in line with his way of thinking. The battle going on inside him is intense, because _Jesus fuck_ he knows he’s turned on, and he knows just how wrong that is. He leaves the washing up, letting the knife and fork clatter in the sink, and heads to his room. His hands are balled into tight fists, nails digging into his palms. _What’s wrong with him?_

In the privacy of his room he stretches out on the bed and sighs, releasing some of his pent-up frustration. This is nothing. He just needs a good fuck, and to resist the temptation of food. He can do that…

He reaches for the telephone on the bedside table and punches in the number. It rings twice before being picked up.

‘Arthur de Vere.’ The voice is deep and clear, tone businesslike as usual even at seven o’clock on a Sunday evening.

‘Art, it’s Mycroft. Are you busy?’

‘Can’t say I am, old chap. Looking for a way to pass the evening?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Glad to hear it. See you here in half an hour?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Wonderful.’

And with that Arthur hangs up, leaving Mycroft with the dialling tone. He sets the phone back down, and observes his reflection in the full-length mirror mounted in the wardrobe. Finding himself in an acceptable state he heads back downstairs and takes his coat from the hook.

‘I’m going out,’ he calls to Sherlock. ‘Don’t burn the place down.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! You know best, should I continue? (Things are only gonna get kinkier...)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You know best, should I continue?


End file.
